Opposition MPs ask whether commissioner offices should be merged

Does Canada need both a lobbying commissioner and a conflict of interest and ethics commissioner — a privacy commissioner and an information commissioner?

On Tuesday, two of those commissioners — Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd and Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault — appeared as witnesses before the House committee on access to information, privacy and ethics.

They were asked whether consolidating their offices could save the government some money.

First up was Conservative MP Pat Kelly, who noted that many provincial privacy and information commissioners are “housed under same roof.”

“Are there additional savings to be had? Does it make sense — given the connection between the two concepts of privacy and access to information — to have one single office to handle both?” he asked.

It’s an option, Legault answered.

“It was historically separate, then joined, then separated again. The law allows for the information commissioner, however, to be the head of both institutions. That’s already provided for by the law. The finances are already joined,” she explained.

There could be some minimal internal efficiency savings and synergies. Provincially and worldwide the offices tend to be combined as they used to be at the federal level in Canada.

But there would be consequences, because there’s an inevitable healthy tension between privacy and transparency, she added.

“What you lose is — you lose the tension between the advocacy of my office, and the position of my office, in relation to what constitutes personal information and what (the) privacy commissioner would see as constituting personal information,” she said.

“And you have to understand that personal information is the exemption that is most used at the federal level to deny disclosure to Canadians. So there is a tension. It can be reconciled, but I think that’s what you would lose the most in joining the two offices…to have strong advocates for very different portions of a system.”

After Kelly, NDP MP Daniel Blaikie pointed out that there’s also been “chatter” about combining the offices of the lobbying commissioner and the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner.

“Do you think there would be financial advantages to doing that?” Blaikie asked Shepherd.

Shepherd’s term expires in June and conflict of interest and ethics commissioner Mary Dawson’s expires in July. The federal government hasn’t given any indication what they plan do when that happens.

Like Legault, Shepherd said there could be synergies where the “two universes overlap” — her office is responsible for conflict of interest as it applies to lobbyists, while Dawson’s focuses on appointed and elected officials.

But that would better addressed through memorandums of understanding that could allow for joint interpretation bulletins and concurrent investigations — without joining the offices.

“I think as my colleague said…what is lost is also a kind of institutional bias. You lose two very strong advocates for both sides of the legislation,” she said.